Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment, as examples. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by processing a semiconductor substrate, e.g. by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography or etching (e.g., wet and/or dry etching) to form circuit components and elements thereon.
Processing the semiconductor substrate may include forming a recess in the semiconductor substrate by means of an etching process. The etching process may result in a metal residue being formed on a surface (e.g. sidewall and/or bottom surface) of the recess. The recess having the metal residue may subsequently be cleaned by means of a wet clean process, as an example. The presence of the metal residue during the cleaning process (e.g. wet clean process) may result in unintended metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE) of the semiconductor substrate, thus forming at least one fissure in the semiconductor substrate. The at least one fissure may adversely affect manufacturing yield and semiconductor device reliability. There is a need to solve this problem, and new ways of manufacturing a semiconductor device may be needed.